Recent Updates
Productivity Booster: Decide to Have Fun Doing It & Enjoy Taking Any Action
It's funny, every time I ask my subscribers questions like: "Where are you stuck right now?" "How could things be better?" "If I could wave a magic wand and fix one thing about you to improve your live, what would it be?"
A very very very small percentage of people tell me things like: I need to improve this conversion rate by 1%... or I need to finish this product...
Most of the people who respond to me tell me they have a deeper problem: lack of focus, not being organized, time management, overwhelm, lack of creativity, or lack of productivity...
Why You Are Where You Are
The good news is these problems are easy to solve. Then why doesn't every one solve them? A few reasons...
First, it takes a lot of existing time and energy to break your existing habits. You'll actually put more work and effort into staying the way you are, even if it's "easier" to act a different way -- more on that in a minute.
Second, it's even easier to regress into your previous self. Think about "that one time" you took a morning run, "that one time" you went to the gym after a New Year's Resolution and then never went back, "that one time" you paid for advertising? Being a productive person is a continuous process, not a one time event!
Third, you self-sabotage yourself every step of the way. Don't feel bad, we all do it. I can't go drive to that place because I can't find my phone. I can't lift weights at the gym because I brought the wrong color shorts. I'm going to cut my run short because the battery in my iPod died. I can't run a webinar because that would mean I actually FINISHED something!
Are we agreed then? We all have a focus/productivity problem, we need to make a PERMANENT change and in a way "outsmart" ourselves to be better... BUT at the same time, we can't "just snap out of it" or "force ourselves to do it" because we won't repeat the process. Here's what you need to do instead...
How to Change Your Own Mind
Let me ask you something, do you enjoy every day going to the dentist, mowing the lawn, and doing the dishes? PROBABLY NOT!
I ask because this last week, I visited a dentist for the first time in 8 years. Don't worry, nothing was hurting, and it turns out I had no cavities. Why did I go? Because it was the right thing to do.
I thought to myself, if they find anything wrong... the damage has already been done, at least they caught it before it got any worse, I can stop worrying about it and I'm better than most people because I'm going to have a good attitude about thing this easy step.
This month, I also fired my landscaper and hired a new one. I've been meaning to get rid of this guy for a while. He stopped pulling the weeds, let the bushes grow into the walkways, began mowing the grass very unevenly, and somehow managed to break most of the sprinklers with his lawnmower.
It's something I've been meaning to do for a while... until one day, I looked out at that misshapen brown lawn and thought, I'm embarrassed to live here. One phone call, hi I'd like to terminate service, do I owe you anything, thanks bye... a second phone call, are you taking on new customers, here's the services I need, what day can you do it, here's my payment information, done.
There are two ways of looking at that. One way, "I have to get rid of this stupid idiot who can't mow my lawn." "Why does my yard suck so much." "I have to make these stupid phone calls." "I have to shell out even more money."
Or, how about this? Everything's been running on autopilot for a while, but it's no longer working out. The landscaper has other business, he has no problem with being fired. Things are a little bit broken, but I'll make two quick phone calls to fix it. And imagine how neat, clean, crisp, trimmed and green the yard will look once this new guy comes in and fixes things.
How This Affects You
You know that optin page you just can't get yourself to finish installing? That Kindle book you can't finish writing? Autoresponder broadcast email you can't seem to write and send?
Here's what WON'Tget you to do it:
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Here's what WILLget you to do it:
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And if you still doubt me... have you ever found yourself cleaning your apartment because you had an important term paper due? Because one was more "fun" and pleasurable than the other.
Have you ever washed your car or cleaned the dishes because you were delaying making some important phone call? Exactly.
Look... you can let this behavior guide you in one of two ways: self sabotage & procrastination (feeling that your unimportant tasks are more "fun" than the important ones)...
Or, focused action & productivity. First figure out what important task you need to do, then justify with it logic. And finally rationalize the following things:
- How taking action on that task will give you more pleasure than pain
- How NOT taking that action will give you more pain than pleasure
- How to enjoy taking that simple action, and have fun doing it, so you'll do it now, you'll do it quickly, and you'll do it over and over again
Question: What's something you've been delaying that you know you should be doing? It's ok if it's something simple, please don't include details if you are too embarrassed ... and what would get you to do it right away?
Instant Focus: Get One Productive Hour (on Command) and Finish Every Task You’ve Been Putting Off
What if there was an easy way you could not only...
- Improve your presentation, speaking, and product creation skills?
- Create more free content, get yourself more free traffic and figure out what your audience wants?
- Get in the habit of completing all your tasks in one day?
But at the same time, actually knocked out the most important tasks in your life -- even the ones you might have been putting off?
This is a technique I've been using for at least 5 years. It's really weird (but easy) to do, and it it's something I use every time I keep procrastinating on a task I want to do, I choose to do, but just can't "bring myself to do..."
- I resize my screen small enough to only have one window open (usually 1024x600)
- I close any distracting windows including Gmail, Twitter, or Facebook
- I RECORD THE SCREEN using Camtasia Recorder (you can use Screencast-O-Matic for free), narrate, and "tutorialize" the task that I've been delaying
- I upload that video recording to YouTube with a linkback to my site to get some extra traffic
For example, today I wanted to publish my book to Amazon CreateSpace. But there are many forms to fill out and lots of tweaking involved.
I had to get it done. I didn't want or need to get it perfect, it just had to be submitted!
And here's me fumbling around on Amazon CreateSpace, submitting my first print book:
I call this the "Camtasia Babysitter" -- because you're recording the screen, it keeps you from pausing or getting distracted by other windows or alerts.
What's one task you could perform, that you know you "should" do, that you "want" to do and even "choose" to do... but now you can record the screen to make sure you finish it?
Overcome Your Limiting Beliefs, Fail Forward & Multiply Your Productivity by Hitting the Reset Button on Your Attitude
I want to help you get more out of the training courses you buy, the products you create, and the things you do every day...
And I would say the #1 ongoing problem that I have (I keep it under control but I'm very mindful of this problem), and that other marketers I come across with have, is the thing called...
LIMITING BELIEFS!
It's because of "limiting beliefs" that you stop your car at a red light: you believe that if you run that light, you might get killed, kill someone, or at least get an expensive ticket from a traffic camera. You don't commit murder, you don't steal or hurt others for thousands of reasons.
BUT having limiting beliefs in the wrong place means you don't always achieve your peak potential, you hold yourself back, and you don't get what you want or deserve.
Anchoring, Conflict, Sabotage
It's a way more serious issue than you've been led to believe. Here's how it happens:
Step #1: Your "bad behavior" (procrastinating, not finishing what you start, not making progress) gets anchored. How?
When you hang around the wrong people, their own destructive behavior rubs off on you. Haven't you ever dealt with a friend, or maybe a family member, who always seemed to be miserable? Who seemed to complain about everything? Complaining about the world made that person feel smart and relevant, and bringing others down to their level made them feel significant.
I don't want to get too personal, but during my teenage years and early twenties I have dealt with people who (unknowingly) punished me for success and rewarded me for failure. This is exactly why that saying "your income is the average income of your 5 closest friends" exists.
Step #2: Now, you start to experience "inner conflict" -- the nerdy term for this is cognitive dissonance. This is where you hold multiple beliefs that contradict each other. The easy one for most of us to point out is…
"I want to make lots of money, but I also feel like making lots of money is a bad thing"
Step #3: And the result of that is "self sabotage" -- some people label this as driving with one foot on the gas and one foot on the brake.
You create a product, setup a website, send emails, pay for traffic, begin a launch sequence… but when it comes time to make some sales… you drop it and you've moved onto the next thing.
You launch a brand new live class, and at the last second when it's time to open the doors, you chicken out and price it at $17 dollars instead of $997 or higher… worrying about being yelled at, people refunding, or not delivering on your claims… when in fact, none of that has happened yet!
If I wanted to, I could tell you stories about refunds I received on my birthday, on the day I quit my job, on Christmas morning BUT I choose not to worry about 1% of returned DIGITAL sales -- it's just as silly as not getting a cat because it will die in 20 years, not getting married because you might get divorced, not having a kid because it might grow up to hate you, not going to school because you might flunk out, not taking a job because you might get fired from it, not buying a house because someone might break into it, not buying a new car because someone might steal it!
Let's break down the three types of limiting beliefs: hopelessness (global beliefs), helplessness (personal beliefs), and worthlessness (future beliefs)…
Limiting Belief #1:
"Hopelessness"
This is where authority figures tell you something is impossible. Growing up it might have been a parent or mentor, nowadays it might be the news or a friend.
I like to keep in touch with my subscribers and every now and then I hear the excuse that "no one is making money during this economic downtime" (which I read from my iPhone, sitting in my Ford Mustang, in line at a Del Taco drive thru, surrounded by brand new cars). I hear that "internet marketing doesn't work" and yet everyone is buying more books, movies, plane tickets, and music online than ever before.
It makes it very tempting, easy and REWARDING to not take any action! There's no point in me learning, doing, or perfecting my internet business because it's all a big lie, right?
Limiting Belief #2:
"Helplessness"
This is where you might see that something is possible, but it's just not something you can do. During my early years in college, I had a middle-aged mentor from England who kept telling me about his $1,000 and $2,000 days… almost every day.
He kept giving me these numbers, and I was happy for him, but it made me think why I wasn't making that kind of money at the time. Then I'd try to justify it in any way possible!
Once again, a less than 1% refund rate but I've had refunds for the same product because it was "too complicated" for one person, and "too simple" for another. One person refunded "WordPress Drip" because they didn't realize it a WordPress plugin, "Newbie Crusher" because they didn't know it was for newbies, and "PHP Start Pack" because they didn't know it was for PHP. These are very rare events, but I find them very funny!
In reality, if you're looking for a "cop out" reason to not take action… you'll find it.
Here's the thing. If you take anyone's course and have the "wrong" attitude going in, you're never going to get the results you want. I remember in an earlier stage in my life, if I'd read an article or a book, and if I didn't already know or agree with what was said, I thought it was a waste of time! How silly. Likewise, in a different stage of my life, if I wasn't blown away by tons and tons of new material, I'd think the product was a waste of time.
One Piece of Information...
But now, if I attend an offline event, join a membership, or even attend a webinar or teleseminar… and even if it's a bad one… if I can get one takeaway piece of information, it's worthwhile.
People with the "helpless" limiting belief tend to take some action, but there's no follow through. I can't tell you how many students we've had who came to us with the "same" story of spending 40 thousand, 60 thousand, 100 thousand dollars on other peoples' courses. And in a couple weeks we got them to setup their business and many times make their first sale. And then, they're gone… dropped off the face of the earth and I never hear from these people again because their limiting beliefs kept them from actually making some money online.
Limiting Belief #3:
"Worthlessness"
You might not believe you deserve to make a million dollars, or $10,000 a month, or to pay off your house, whether you admit it or not OR whether you even realize it or not.
They might have launched a product or two, and earned $1000 or $5000, but kept quiet about the results, didn't repeat the process, and didn't improve. These are the people who tell themselves they're "happy" making $500 a month online while still working at their day job that they hate, because it's easier.
They won't re-market an old product to their existing list of subscribers because some of them already own it. They worry about which blog theme to install this week, what's the best time of day to email, and what to price their product… when none of these things matter! Taking action and following through does.
Maybe I'm talking about you and you don't even realize it! I don't know. But I do know that if someone came to you and asked what your plan is to make $10k this month, or $100k this month (or whatever your next milestone is) and you're instantly angry, frustrated, and self-defeating… you've got a serious problem and you can either let it own you, or you can get it out of the way and move past it.
Now, how do you overcome your limiting beliefs and achieve your peak potential?
Solution #1:
"Ask Better Empowering Questions"
The first thing I want you to do is be very aware of the words you use over and over to describe yourself as a person, where you are in life, others around you, and how you deal with adversity.
Here's what I mean. If you're the kind of person who constantly asks themselves, "Why does this always happen to me?" Or, "Why am I such a screw up?" Or, "Why is everyone out to get me?" Then you're setting yourself up for failure.
On the other hand, if you ask yourself…
- What are at least three things that will make me feel better today?
- What am I excited about today?
- How can I learn from this problem?
- What isn't perfect yet and how can I move at least one step in that direction?
- How can I enjoy the things I'm going to do today?
- What parts of my life do I enjoy the most and how do those things make me a better person?
- What will I lose (or miss out on) if I don't take action right now?
- What is the next step I need to take today?
- What's one thing I was going to do later, but will instead do right now?
Tony Robbins made this "empowering question" technique famous although I was using this before I'd heard of Robbins. I actually learned this from a course about "how to write a bestselling book" a decade ago which told me to phrase book chapter titles as questions. The truth is, when a question is asked, your subconscious has to answer it, whether you realize it or not… so why not apply it to real life instead of just writing?
Garbage in, garbage out! Ask negative questions and you get negative answers. Ask BETTER questions and you'll get better answers.
Solution #2:
"Model Successful People"
Now that you've asked yourself better questions, or even if you're having trouble thinking of better questions, use your imagination to have someone ask it for you.
- What would Will Smith think about your current problem and how to fix it?
- If Michelle Obama launched a membership site and it didn't make a bunch of sales right away, what her next step be?
- How about George Clooney, Betty White, Michael J. Fox, Sandra Bullock? Would they think twice about mailing their list, contacting a joint venture partner, or setting up a new landing page?
Armand Morin calls this "Success Leaves Traces", Christians call this, "What Would Jesus Do" and NLP calls this "Modeling." It means, find a mentor who is where you want to be, look at what they do, find out what they did to get there, and follow their system. Tom Cruise wouldn't be afraid of running a 1-hour webinar, so why are you?
Solution #3:
"Just Do It"
This sounds like the cheesiest statement ever, but as soon as you stop "trying" to market your product and just market your product, you'll actually make sales.
Stop thinking about it so much and just "fail forward." Steve Jobs never intended to make movies, but after being kicked out of Apple, losing half his life savings on NeXT, and losing even more money on Pixar, he finally stumbled on creating movies -- $7 billion from 12 movies.
There's no way I would have begun putting out copywriting products, selling web templates, webinar classes, or even WordPress plugins if I hadn't "failed" through a bunch of mediocre launches for PHP products.
Solution #4:
"Have a Goal and Put a Value on Your Outcome"
Every month where I've set a clear goal about how many sales of a specific product I want to make, or how much money I want to make that month, I've made more money. Funny how that works.
Can I tell you something else? Within a 1 year period, I went from being single, with a day job, "stuck" at the 10K per month range, to attending my first few internet marketing seminars, buying my dream car in cash at age 22, buying my first home at age 23, getting a long-term girlfriend (who I'm now living with 5 years later), and having several months with over $30,000 in income. I quit my day job permanently a few months after that.
Why did all this happen? I wrote down all the things I wanted to have. (This is what books like "Think and Grow Rich" are all about.) Next, I figured out what it would take to make those things happen… making more deals, launching more products, marketing more aggressively to my list, getting more traffic, building a bigger list, charging more money, writing better sales copy, the usual stuff!
Now that I knew what my goal was, and what actions I needed to take to achieve those goals, I could compare the pleasure versus the pain. Pain being time, effort, possibility of failure, moving out of my comfort zone, social awkwardness, putting myself out there. And pleasure being money, happiness, a relationship, comfort, security, peace of mind… all that good stuff.
And now I was aligned just right… moving AWAY from the pain and TOWARDS the pleasure, instead of self-sabotage.
Solution #5:
"Objection-Based Thinking"
Think in terms of small roadblocks (and little objections) instead of impassive barriers. The reason you don't have what you want, and the reason why you're not taking the actions you should, a real reason or just an excuse?
If there was just one thing holding you back from choosing your niche, what would it be? What about what's holding you back from creating a membership site? Is it something as simple as not knowing what software? Let's say you could only choose one thing.
I know I just threw a lot at you, but I think it's going to help. Tell me below, what's your current limiting belief and how is it holding you back? Or, what's a limiting belief you used to have and how did you overcome it? Please tell me below right now.
Scientific Advertising: Find Out Where the “Problem” Area Is (and Claim the Profits You’ve Been Missing All Along)
Here is what you need to make the "most" amount of money online...
1. An offer with a $1 EPC (Earnings Per Click or visitor value) -- for example, a $47 product that converts at 2% so that "on average" you make $1.00 every time someone lands on your web page
2. A responsive subscriber list with a 2% clickthrough rate -- this means when you send out an email, 2% of all your subscribers click over to your web page. If you have a 1000 person list, expect 20 clicks per day from those subscribers
3. An upsell offer (a 2nd product to buy immediately after they join) set at roughly double the frontend product price with a 33% take rate -- meaning if you make 10 sales at $47, 3 out of those 10 people will buy the additional product at $97
Adding this upsell increases your EPC from $1 to $1.66. 20 clicks per day = $33.20/day = about $1000 per month from a list of 1000.
What Does This All Mean?
1. You need to place Google Analytics on your web page to find out how well it's converting... is your frontend at $1 EPC yet? If you have a $97 product there, does it convert at 1%? Does your $47 product convert at 2%? Does your $17 product convert at 6%?
If not, setup Google Website Optimizer and run an A/B split test to increase your conversions.
2. You need to track your links either using your autoresponder's built in tracking (which is what I do) or use Linktrackr... you NEED to know how many clicks a typical email gets you.
If you're getting lower than a 2% clickthrough rate then you need to either increase your email deliverability, send more emails or improve your email marketing.
3. If you don't have an upsell yet, add that offer to your download page and track that using a separate Google Analytics campaign as well -- and even split test two different upsells using Google Website Optimizer until you get it to 33%.
If you don't have a list, if you're not promoting to that list and you're not earning $1 per subscriber per month from that list, then you're doing something wrong.
Now Here's Something Cool...
Let's say you had a subscriber list of 10,000 subscribers -- or were able to get 10 affiliates to promote who each had a 1,000 subscriber list. In any case, you have access to 10,000 people to tell about this webinar.
10,000 subscribers and you want 250 attendees to show up live on a webinar. (By the way, present a webinar the correct way and you can hit $10-$20 Earnings per Attendee on a webinar but that's another story.) Now I can work backwards and figure out how big of a list you'd need...
I know that when it comes to a webinar, I get 50% of all visitors to optin and 33% to show up live. That number never changes, even when I ask other people for their numbers.
- 10,000 subscribers means an email gets 200 clicks per email
- 250 live attendees means 750 people need to register
- 750 people registered means I need to send 1500 clicks
- You'll need to hit those 10,000 subscribers 8 times before the webinar -- easy to do with a few quick update spread out along 5 days
Lance and I go through a very similar thought process every time we plan a new class, offer, or promotion. You basically need to ask yourself these questions:
1. What's the minimum amount of money I'd be happy with in the next 30 days?
2. Based on your subscribers (if you have a list of your own, great -- if not you'll need affiliates) what price point will they buy at? Now you know how many copies you need to sell
3. Assuming $1 per click with no upsell and $2 per click with an upsell, how you know how many clicks you need
4. Now that you know the required number of clicks, you know how many people need to see your offer to click and buy
That Might Be a Little Too Much Math For Now,
But The Point Is...
If you setup your sales letter and didn't make sales, was it because no one saw your web page? That means you need a bigger list and affiliates. If you see 100 clicks coming in every day and you're not making 1-2 sales a day, then you need to convert better! Add a split test and a follow sequence. It doesn't have to be complicated.
I guess what I'm trying to say is, break down the numbers so you can improve. Break them down so that if everything doesn't go "perfectly" ... it's not your fault, there's just one little thing you need to improve.
Does that make sense? What are your thoughts?
Is It Evil to Have an Upsell?
You know what an upsell is, right? You buy thing #1 from me, I offer you thing #2 that's related but NOT required for thing #1 to work...
Lance and I released our "Backup Creator" WordPress plugin 6 months ago -- click a button, it backs up WordPress. Click a different button, it restores WordPress somewhere else... and it's now protecting over 20,000 WordPress sites!
- Some people bought "Backup Creator" for $7, some for $17, $27, $37, and $47
- We promised 1 years of bug fixes and "updates" but not "upgrades" (new features) -- important difference
- We recently released a "Backup Creator Ultimate" version that includes auto backup, FTP backup, FTP restore, and a few other things
- Anyone who buys today for $47 doesn't have a choice between the old "Backup Creator" and "Backup Creator Ultimate" -- they get Ultimate
- Anyone who already paid $47 for "Backup Creator" gets Ultimate for free
- Anyone who already paid $37 upgrades to Ultimate for $10, anyone who paid $27 can upgrade for $20, etc.
Most of our customers were thrilled that we released a new version with new features. Only a couple of people had complaints.
I want to share those few complaints with you and put this out in the open just to make sure we are "doing the right thing!"
Here's what's been said:
- "If I upgrade now for $40, and pay $47 total, I lose my $7 early bird discount. I'd be no better off than anyone else"
- "Many of us who Beta Tested your software spent quite a bit of time chasing down problems and reinstalling updates on all our blogs. I think you now have a wonderful product and will make a lot of money. I would suggest you reward all those who helped you get there."
- "I have been getting all these emails telling me how great the update to back up creator was going to be when the only update was that you wanted more money from us........... Sorry guys IMHO you blew this"
Those are actual unedited quotations. I thought long and hard about airing this kind of "dirty laundry" in public but I really want to know what YOU think.
I'm honestly not upset, or bitter in ANY way... just asking you personally, did we do the right thing releasing a new version, or should we have stuck to our "original" version that only backed up and restored, and did nothing else? Please post your response below...
Edit: From now on we will be sure to be 100% clear with the updates policy, and if we do offer an upgrade path for our software in the future, we will make it a "flat rate" or find some way to make sure those early birds keep their early bird discount. Thanks again for that discussion!
Remote Desktop: Biggest Time Saver of 2012 (Access Your Files from Anywhere)
Can I tell you how to get your own personal assistant, 100% for free?
The "secret" is installing remote desktop software on your computer -- I have been using it for well over a decade and I hope you have too.
Ok, it isn't a "real" assistant, but this is a way you can remotely see your screen, click around, and even use the keyboard as if you were right there at the computer. In fact, if someone happens to be home looking at your computer screen, it looks like it's possessed, because you're controlling it! Here's where it really came in handy...
The other day I needed to start (and present) on a webinar, and I was a 30 minute drive from home. At present there is no easy way to present a webinar from a mobile device using GoToWebinar. But you know what I did instead?
- I had a program called "LogMeIn" (free) installed on my home computer
- I used the "LogMeIn" app ($30) on my iPhone to remotely login, and start the webinar from that computer
- I switched the "audio mode" on that webinar from presenting on the microphone, to calling in via telephone
- I called into that number on my phone, and spoke into the phone while presenting the webinar and viewing questions
I have been using remote desktop technology for well over a decade (I used to use "pcAnywhere" in high school and college) and what I like about LogMeIn is that you can connect via your iPhone, iPad, Windows PC or Mac.
Anytime you need to...
- Get access to that file or spreadsheet you have been working on
- Check PayPal stats without tripping any red flags on your account (even overseas)
- Process video files, start webinars
- Even leave a document open so I can just switch to it
Because of this app, I don't have to worry about having "that one file uploaded" before I leave, or even carry my laptop along on most trips. As long as I have a 3G or Wifi connection, I know I can use my computer.
I would even go as far as to say that "remote desktop" software is my favorite app of 2012 and probably my biggest time saver to-date.
Question: Do you use remote desktop software on your computer? Why or why not?
Just Upload It: The Real Secret to Jumping Through Hoops & Getting All Your Micro-Tasks Done
I can't begin to calculate how much money I lost for years just because I didn't put a single optin page online.
Email Optin Page
Simple "piece of paper" web page, headline describing what my free gift was, three bullet points going into very QUICK detail of each one, call to action telling people to fill in the form below, and an email optin web form.
Set it to redirect to a page offering a free gift. Easy way to offer a free gift? Go to EzineArticles, search your niche, grab 3 articles that look good, copy them out leaving names and resource boxes intact, add the link to your website. Paste into Microsoft Word and save as a PDF file.
- Do you have articles or blog posts of your own? Even better. Put 3 of your own articles into that PDF.
- Do you already have an information product? Pull out one of the bonuses or one chapter and that's your free gift.
- Do you run free 1-hour pitch webinars? Take your most recent one and put the video behind that optin page.
I don't know why, but I used to think it was "a lot of work" setting up a simple optin page using this exact process. It's not work! You're sitting in a chair, not even really thinking too much, taking 5 minutes on this total.
Webinar Optin Page
For some reason I fell into the same pattern when it came to running webinars. You might have noticed that early on, many of our webinars had a "fancy" optin page. Meaning, when you signed up for one of our webinars, it wasn't the usual ugly GoToWebinar screen.
It used our template. We could embed an autoplay audio or video on the signup form. Even auto-signup any of our subscribers with one click. (This is all possible using our "Webinar Optin" plugin.)
But you know what happened for years? I was lazy. I right click and copied the webinar link and sent it to my list that way. I still do many times.
Login to GoToWebinar, find upcoming webinar, right click webinar link and "Copy Link Location" ... go to template, paste in webinar link, change headline and bullet points... save and email. Once again, 5 minutes tops.
Affiliate Optin Page
Here's a technique Lance and I have been using for years. An affiliate wants to promote us, we setup an optin page just for them, once again using Webinar Optin. We setup an optin page just for the affiliate, which tags any subscribers they send into our affiliate program.We setup a page for them such as www.example.com/lance. The page registers that subscriber to our pre-sell list for that product, and registers them for the webinar.
I record the webinar as we run it, where we have some teaching and pitch the offer at the end. I save and produce the recording in Camtasia, and throw it online behind the optin page. That affiliate can still send traffic, get tagged, show people the replay, and there's now a button under the replay for people to buy.
Why did I used to think this was "a lot of work?" And it's all possible using ONE simple piece of free software...
The Secret: EditPlus
I've used the same text editor for over 12 years now and it's called EditPlus. I started using it back in high school when I became tired of... downloading a file from my web server, editing that file, then uploading it back up and checking to see what changes had occured on the website.
EditPlus has a built-in FTP client. Which means you can login to FTP and access your files right within the program, open a file, edit it, hit the save button... and it "magically" saves it without you having to do any extra uploading and downloading.
Here's where it saves me tons of time setting up optin pages, webinar pages, and affiliate pages. I just find one of my optin pages laying around, open it in EditPlus... and just re-save the template with the new changes in the new location.
What It All Means
The next time you're putting off setting up an optin page, signing up to an affiliate system like Clickbank, throwing some solo ads onto an "affiliate toolbox" page for your affiliates, heck, even sending out a quick email to your list... just ask yourself, why? It's won't even take 5 minutes.
And if you just re-use the last template you used, and use EditPlus to quickly open and re-save... you can do it even faster.
Here's something else to think about: If you really can't bring yourself to do it, could you record your screen using Camtasia Recorder and record yourself doing it, so that you HAVE to do it?
And what about this: Could you find a way to provide this as a service, and get paid to setup an optin page? Get paid to setup an affiliate program? Get paid to setup a 1-click webinar optin page... for people who don't want to do it?
What Makes Money: List, Traffic, and Offers
Strategy: Do you want to know what you need when you're building a real business and making real money online?
A. Create an information product and a download area for people to get it after they buy
B. Make a sales letter that explains why it's so great
C. Get traffic to it and build a list of prospects and buyers
That's it. List, traffic, and offers -- this was true back in 1997 when all you needed was a website to get traffic, in 1999 when all you needed was an affiliate program to get traffic, in 2002 when all you needed was search engine listings to get traffic, in 2005 when all you needed was a list to get traffic, and even in 2007 and beyond when all you need are joint venture partners to get massive traffic.
Tactics: Do you want to know what doesn't work?
- Free for all link pages
- Doorway pages & search engine cloaking
- Safelists
- Email co-registration
- Traffic exchanges
- Paid leads
- Guaranteed optins
- Tell-a-friend
- JV giveaways
- Ad swaps
- Warrior special offers
- Auto-bloggers
- Traffic loopholes
- Social media
- "Traffic getting" software
What's funny is that even if you haven't heard of every single one of these so-called "business models" -- they're the same traffic technique (which doesn't work, or only works for a couple months) -- then a year later it comes back under a different name...
Funny, right?
I know it's easy to get distracted by all these fancy terms and techniques but this is what you REALLY need to do:
A. Make a Product & Put It In a Membership Site
- Run a 4-week webinar class (using GoToWebinar) solving a problem in your niche
- Put those recording into a membership site (using Wishlist Member) and get them transcribed into reports
- Create a piece of software (using WP Notepad) or buy resale rights (Master-Resale-Rights.com) that solves your problem in a "push button" way and add it to that site
B. Build a List & Send Them to Your Sales Letter
- Capture the buyers of your membership site into a mailing list using Aweber
- Pull out ONE module or ONE bonus of your paid course, give it away for free and create a landing page where people can sign up and upgrade to the paid version
- Email your list every day
C. Drive Traffic to Increase Your List Size
- Setup an affiliate program and link to it in your product and in your membership site to recruit your buyers into affiliates
- Make at least 1 forum post every day and post at least 1 article every day until you have 100 articles and 1,000 forum posts
- Pay for at least 1 source of paid advertising even if it's just an email solo ad or a banner ad on a blog
That's what works for me, now YOU tell me... what works for you? What was your biggest breakthrough when it came to making a product, building a list, getting traffic, and making money? Go ahead and tell me in the comments below.
How to Make Your Words Sell: Attention, Interest, Desire, Action
Is it okay if I share with you the ONE formula that appears everywhere, again and again... and if you keep it in your back pocket every time you assemble a sales letter, create a blog post, make a product, send an email, and even deal with everyday relationships, you'll always win?
If I share this formula with you, will you check and make sure your web pages pass the test so you can convert as many people as possible?
I hope you've heard of this formula, and it's this: attention, interest, desire, action...
Every time you put out any piece of writing, video, or even live presentation -- run it through this filter. Here's what I mean...
- Get someone's attention using a shocking statement or headline
- Build interest by agitating your problem or setting up a question
- Setup the desire for your solution by revealing it and explaining it
- Tell people what to do now by telling them to take action
If you've even given (or read) a course, presentation, sales letter, or any other message that was missing an opening, seemed to "linger" too much on a problem, jump into a solution without addressing it, or had everything right except the end -- it was probably neglecting one or all of the above steps.
And I want to multiply your conversion rates by making sure you follow these simple rules. You can get as creative as you want as long as you follow this four step formula. Check it out...
ATTENTION:
Sales Letter Headline or Blog Post Title
When I write blog posts, I like to split the title into two parts: what I'm talking about (the feature), and the result of it (the benefit)... just look at my last few blog post titles here:
- Specialized Knowledge: How to Make $50 (or More) Every 5 Minutes, All Day Long, By Clicking a Few Buttons (Just Like I Did at Age 17)
- Speed Copywriting Explained (Assemble a Web Page That Gets People to Buy From You In the Next Few Minutes)
- It's Simple, So It Must Not Work: How You Too Can Make Several Thousand Dollars in a Weekend
- Website Backup: Keep Your Site Safe, Instantly Clone Your Blog, and Get Things Done Anywhere
- The Accordion Method (And Now You Never Run Out of Content Ever Again)
Now I have blog post titles that are both short, and long!
With sales letters, it's even simpler. The headline isn't necessarily the title of the web page we're on, it's just the HEADER that gets us to continue reading...
Think about the first thing you want to say to your visitor to keep them alert, on your web page, and hungry for more. Whatever you say should answer "most" of these questions:
- What's in it for me? (promises a clear benefit)
- What's my problem or solution? (without giving away your product yet)
- Why should I even listen to you? (get attention either with a question, challenge, or shocking statement)
- Is this newsworthy? (something new and unique that's worth reading about)
- Do I have a reason to continue reading? (does it lead to another thought?)
Yes, I'm saying that your headline should contain all of these items...
More often than not I'll have that headline big, red, centered, bolded, and in quotes at the top of that web page, but what's more important than the formatting is that the WORDS are impossible to ignore. For example:
- "How I Made an Extra $101,934.10 In 80 Days From 4 Low Ticket Products (With Zero Traffic and a Tiny List) Using One Very Special Piece of Affiliate Software..."
- Backup, Clone, Protect... WordPress Plugin Makes It Simple For You To Backup, Restore And Protect Your WordPress Blogs And Sites Anytime You Want With Just A Few Easy Clicks...
- "How Would You Like My Instant Formula For Creating High-Impact, Persuasive, Converting Sales Letters in the Next Few Minutes?"
- "If You're Feeling Completely Overloaded, Unorganized and Feel Like You're Always Running Out of Time..." You Need to Get a Grip on (and Control of) Your Time Management Skills!
And I'll usually add a subheadline that COMPLETES the thought that the headline first created. Why? Because it gets people reading further down, and then further, until the next thing you know, they've read the whole sales letter all the way down to the buy button.
INTEREST:
Problem or Big Picture
You've got my attention, but I'm not ready to buy your product yet. And even if I was, I need to know you can actually UNDERSTAND and SOLVE my problem... which is why you need to tell me what problem I'm having and how can you really help me solve it...
I need to stress here that we're not introducing your product yet. I see too many sales letters start off with, "I want you to buy my product right now." You're jumping the gun.
This is the STORYTELLING section. Introduce the problem so that I have to find out how it ends -- with the introduction of your product.
You should probably answer these questions:
- Who are you and why are you qualified to help me?
- What exactly is my problem and what's the "difficult" solution?
- What do I need to know and what issues did I not even consider yet?
- Why are you better than anyone else?
Check out the deck copy for "Membership Cube" to see what I mean...
For the last several years internet marketers have told you how easy it is to setup your membership site and get a flood of people paying you every month for your services, your expertise, and your information. But there are just a few problems...
It's Not As Easy As "They" Say It Is...
These Are The Same People That Told You
"All You Need Is a Website"
- Where will you get the content for this membership site?
- How will you get people into it, and keep them from dropping out?
- What software will you use for the membership, and what plugins?
- What the heck will you do next?
How Did That Work Out For You?
I Can Tell You From My Own Personal Experience:
Membership Sites Are The Best Thing
To Ever Happen To Me!It IS possible to profit from a membership site as long as you make the right decisions. But don't worry, we've already made the tough decisions for you in our simple step by step system.
I'm confident in those steps because these are the same steps Lance and I have implemented to create 20 membership sites -- 19 of those sites were created in the past 12 months. And guess what, they've all made money: some as little as $2,000 and some well over $100,000.
Do you see what we're doing? We're educating our prospect about why membership sites are so valuable and differentiating from the competition (especially membership software that doesn't come without training) and saying, you need to listen to us.
One reason I really like telling a story in copy is that it doesn't feel like an ad. But far too many copywriters get stuck on the story, the whole sales letter is one long story, and people still don't know what they're buying. That's why you need to get to the third stage WELL BEFORE the halfway point in your copy...
DESIRE:
Solution or Exact Offer
At this point, you'll reveal YOUR product in that sales letter, meaning a huge headline with the name of the course or item, and a graphical representation, it's just that simple. If I can't easily tell that you're selling an ebook, or video course, or membership site, or physical seminar, or physical item -- in under a minute just by scrolling through -- then you need to make it clearer.
In the "interest" stage you've already done the clever storytelling... now you need to tell me what it is you want me to buy:
- What's the exact name of your product and what's in it?
- What's in each module, why is each module important and why is it given in the order you show it?
- What bonuses are you giving me?
- What is each component worth on its own? (dollar value)
- What is the total value of this product you're about to give me? (total up the dollar values)
- What actual price is it going to cost today? (much lower than the total value)
You'll want to end the "desire" stage by listing everything people get in a two-column table... first column, the name of the module they're getting; second column, the price tag on it.
It may seem tedious to total up each $197 or $297 price tag on your individual modules to get a total of $2,217.00, but believe me, it'll look way more impressive when you then DROP the price to $97 or $47 or $27. Very few people do this on sales letters, but they need to!!!
It's super important that you lay out the ENTIRE offer in the "desire" section. Yes, even the bonuses. Lay out the ENTIRE offer before you ask for the sale, including bonuses.
Have you ever noticed that on some sales letters, you scroll to the bottom, then scroll back up to look at something, then back down? That's not good and when I do that, I notice it's usually because someone got my attention, laid out the story, the entire offer, even showed the guarantee and asked for the sale -- and THEN introduced bonuses! Big mistake.
Now people know we relate to their problem and have the credibility to solve it, we've revealed that product and explained our offer -- and at the end, listed everything in the package and revealed the price... what's left? People will know to order on their own, right?
Wrong! Every time I specifically tell people reading a blog post, sales letter, or email optin form -- to fill out the form, conversion rates go up. We can never make it OBVIOUS enough...
ACTION:
Why To Buy (or Comment) Now
This is probably the most cookie-cutter part of any sales letter, but it's still important. You need to tell me:
- What's your guarantee? (30 days or 60 days? Can I get my money back for any reason?)
- What price are you charging? (state it again, make it as simple and clear as possible)
- How do I order? (i.e., "click on the button and pay $97 to JumpX LLC")
- What are the technical requirements to run your product? (i.e., Adobe Reader, Windows Media Player, WordPress)
- How soon until I receive your product after downloading? (i.e., instant delivery)
In an optin form we're asking for their name and email address, in a blog post we're asking for a comment (easy to get if you ask a question at the end of your blog post), and on a sales letter we're asking for people to buy.
The Entire Formula Revealed
I know that was a lot to take in, but here's the whole AIDA formula laid out for you:
- A1: What's in it for me? (promises a clear benefit)
- A2: What's my problem or solution? (without giving away your product yet)
- A3: Why should I even listen to you? (get attention either with a question, challenge, or shocking statement)
- A4: Is this newsworthy? (something new and unique that's worth reading about)
- A5: Do I have a reason to continue reading? (does it lead to another thought?)
- I1: Who are you and why are you qualified to help me?
- I2: What exactly is my problem and what's the "difficult" solution?
- I3: What do I need to know and what issues did I not even consider yet?
- I4: Why are you better than anyone else?
- D1: What's the exact name of your product and what's in it?
- D2: What's in each module, why is each module important and why is it given in the order you show it?
- D3: What bonuses are you giving me?
- D4: What is each component worth on its own? (dollar value)
- D5: What is the total value of this product you're about to give me? (total up the dollar values)
- D6: What actual price is it going to cost today? (much lower than the total value)
- A1: What's your guarantee? (30 days or 60 days? Can I get my money back for any reason?)
- A2: What price are you charging? (state it again, make it as simple and clear as possible)
- A3: How do I order? (i.e., "click on the button and pay $97 to JumpX LLC")
- A4: What are the technical requirements to run your product? (i.e., Adobe Reader, Windows Media Player, WordPress)
- A5: How soon until I receive your product after downloading? (i.e., instant delivery)
I hope that pushes you in the right direction with your...
- Sales Letters: Attention-grabbing headline, interesting story, desirable offer, and order button as the call-to-action
- Webinar Pitches: Start with a big promise (attention), demonstrate something live on the call (interest), explain your offer (desire), and tell them where to buy (action)
- Email Marketing: Send an "attention" email hinting at a problem, an "interest" email agitating that problem, a "desire" email introducing your solution and URL, an "action" email with just your URL... and repeat the process
- Information Products: Start each chapter of your report with a bold claim (attention), give them the big picture (interest), explain the step by step process (desire), and end with an assignment (action)
So what's the verdict, does your sales letter pass this 20-point checklist? (It's okay if it doesn't yet.) What's the URL to it? Go ahead and respond with your answer below.
Top 5 Productivity Devices of 2011
I honestly want to make sure you are doing something every day and making progress towards making more money every single day you are online. That's why, since it's November now and Christmas is coming up, I want to share with you which items I use every single day to stay happy, get things finished and enjoy life...
Philips Hf3485 Wake-up Light Plus ($150)
http://youtu.be/BdboMtXfa9w
It's really important to wake up early and get as much accomplished in your business before noon. When I had days off in college, I'd sleep until 12PM to 2PM and not really get anything done on a typical day -- not good! But when I had to balance internet marketing and a day job, I found myself waking up early (5AM or 6AM) and I'd get more finished during that one focused hour than I used to do in a week.
Now that I am full time with internet marketing, it's even more important wake up early (and usually go running or swimming) so that I can hit the ground running every morning and have afternoons and evenings free to relax and unwind. Routine is important. I don't use the alarm clock function on this, but when I wake up, I reach over and turn on this light. It shines a very bright light that completely wakes you up and gets you ready to hop out of bed in just a few minutes.
Cuisinart SS-780 Coffeemaker ($169)
I'm not a huge coffee drinker, but I do like to make tea or hot chocolate and on occasion put some ice cubes in a mug and pour iced coffee. This machine is amazing. You put a cartridge on the top of the machine and it makes one cup for you at a time (you can adjust what size your "cup" is) then you just throw away the cartridge or "K-Cup." They make several flavors, my favorite is the Chai Latte. If the machine is off it takes about 3 minutes to warm up and then about 30 seconds to make a cup. If the machine is already on standby then it literally takes 30 seconds to make yourself a cup of coffee, tea, or cocoa and then you're back to writing some emails, making some products and generating some traffic.
G-SAFE 2TB ($560)
We all take backups for granted. It's not an exciting subject even though at some point or another we have all lost files we wish we could get back. I used to store all my files on my hard drive... bad idea. Then I tried putting things on a USB stick... also a bad idea. External hard drive... even worse! And Internet bandwidth is not yet fast enough where we can store 100% of our files online in the cloud (especially video), so here is the next best thing.
This is external hard drive that connects using USB2. If your computer has an E-SATA port then it will run even faster. But I store all my videos, products, articles, graphics, all my large files on this device. It holds two 2TB hard drives but what makes this special is it "mirrors" the data on both drives. It's basically a constant backup. So if one hard drive ever fails (it hasn't happened yet) you can slide it out, stick a brand new hard drive in its slot without even turning it off, and it will back up all your data to that 2nd drive.
iPad 2 16GB 3G ($579) & Logitech Zagg Keyboard ($102)
It takes a lot of willpower not to use my iPad at home to play games all day, but when I'm traveling it's a must-have. It's a lot more convenient than taking a laptop on the road: it's lighter, smaller, and the battery lasts a lot longer, and although it can't do 100% of the things a laptop can, it's pretty close.
When I travel, I put movies (sometimes internet marketing courses) on my iPad, I can browse the internet, play games, write emails to my list, use a word processor. But the biggest headache is the keyboard. I've tried a few iPad 2 keyboards and this is my favorite. It connects via Bluetooth so I can use this keyboard for my iPhone as well, it stands up and doubles as a case. It's also not too small which has been my complaint with many of these keyboards. I have used my iPad 2 and Logitech Zagg keyboard to write articles, emails, and sales letters from the plane.
Roku Player ($100)
If you haven't removed live TV from your home yet, I would encourage you to. Just the fact that I can't waste time flipping channels or watch reality TV gives me extra hours of free time every single day. If you're single or live alone then this is your motivation to make friends. If you have a family then this is your way to spend more time with them. But I'm not saying remove all TV, just live TV.
This box costs 100 bucks (one time payment) and plugs into your TV whether it's HDMI or Composite-RCA, and then connects to your home network over Wifi. It streams all Netflix movies right onto your TV. If you subscribe to Hulu Plus (7 bucks a month) then it streams about half of all Comedy Central, NBC, ABC, FOX. Whatever movies or TV shows aren't on there are probably available for you to buy on Amazon Instant for about 2 to 4 dollars. I consider this a far better (and cheaper) alternative to using cable TV.
I hope that gives you something to get yourself if you want to be more productive, someone who has a birthday coming up for a loved one for the upcoming Christmas season. What item do you use to make yourself more productive?
Membership Sites Explained
Do you have a membership site setup yet? (it's okay if you don't)
When you sell products and services online, you can't avoid the steps that people need to take in order to buy from you:
- View your offer on your sales letter
- Pay you money using your payment processor
- Collect that offer on your download page
And you can literally take any payments without software of any kind. I did that for the better part of the 2000's. It was simple:
- Add HTML page called index.html to your website (presenting your offer)
- Add HTML page called download123xyz.html to your website (presenting your download)
- Login to PayPal, create a Buy Now button that charges $17.00 (and sends people to download123xyz.html after checkout)
- Right click and copy button from PayPal (and paste on the bottom of index.html)
Sounds like a great way to get started but why wouldn't you want to set things up this way?
- Your buyers aren't added to an email list for updates (unless they signup themselves on your download page)
- You can't easily provide lots of bonuses or drip content (refund reducers)
- There's no community (customers can't talk to each other)
- The download page can easily get passed around (you have to rename the page every week)
- It's almost impossible to charge a monthly fee and keep track of who still gets access
- You have to manually setup a new download page for EACH product you want to sell
Instead, you should use a membership site to handle your product downloads, here's all you have to do:
- Add HTML page at www.example.com/index.html (presenting your offer)
- Install WordPress and Wishlist Member at www.example.com/members (presenting your download)
- Create a membership level called "Full" so when someone buys, they get access to everything for now (you can add more levels later)
- Add your blog posts or pages (click "Add Post", type a title and type out the content or paste in the video)
- Login to PayPal, create a Buy Now button that charges $17.00 (and sends people to a special link provided by your membership software)
That's a "slightly" more involved, but you basically go through the same steps, and now:
- Your buyers specify their own unique username and password that they can't share and can always recover (using "lost password" tool)
- Your buyers can get added to your email list for updates (when you specify it in the membership settings)
- You can add more levels and sell an unlimited number of products or packages from the same website
- Any WordPress plugin (including popup software, drip plugins, forum add-ons, and tracking software) can run inside your membership site
- You can easily drip or manually add bonuses for your buyers to reduce refunds
- You can easily switch the payment button to charge in installments, or a monthly fee, for access
- If someone refunds (takes the money back) or cancels (stops paying a recurring payment) they lose access
Do you have a membership site? If so, what's so special about it? If you don't have a membership site, what's stopping you and what are you planning?
Specialized Knowledge: How to Make $50 (or More) Every 5 Minutes, All Day Long, By Clicking a Few Buttons (Just Like I Did at Age 17)
Let me tell you something.
Do you want to know the first time I saw a balance of 1000 bucks in my PayPal account?
It was 2002... geez, a decade ago now, I was 17 years old. I was a senior in high school. I lived with my parents. And you know what I was doing to make my money?
Installing a link tracker plugin. I had programmed it, and people could buy it for 67 bucks (I think)... I would get 1/3rd of that money. Better than working at McDonald's at that age, right?
But the big bucks came in when someone bought that plugin... many people wanted "someone else" to install it.
5 Minutes = 50 Dollars
The price was $50 bucks per install. What they didn't know is it took me about 5 minutes to FTP up files, chmod files, create a database, import that database, create a cron job, edit a config file... in other words, my "specialized knowledge" was worth every penny to them even though I could do it fast.
As you can imagine, it didn't take long to fill up to 1k...
And that paid for college. I'll admit I needed help from my parents for the first year living alone, but never fully. They gave me "some" money for rent. I paid the rest of my rent, plus school, plus food, cable, internet, clothing, all that good stuff...
Why am I telling you all this?
- Because I still believe that if you're starting out, the fastest way to make money is freelancing: performing a service in exchange for pay.
- You can get paid more per hour if you do whatever it is you do FAST
- You get paid even MORE than that if you have a SPECIALIZED SKILL and differentiate yourself
What's a specialized skill? Let's think about this...
Scenario #1: WordPress Installer
How much would someone charge you to install WordPress? 10 bucks? But what if...
- You installed WordPress on their domain
- You loaded it up with a beautiful looking WordPress theme
- You customized it with all the SEO, social media, discussion, and traffic plugins they need
- You setup their blog to retweet and post to their fan page every time you made a post
- You loaded up the blog with YouTube videos, EzineArticles and PLR articles
- You contacted 25 professionals in their niche asking for guest blog content
- You brought people to the site to leave comments
- You setup their autoresponder, optin form, and popup on that blog
Now how much is that worth? 100 bucks MINIMUM... and it still takes you under an hour of work.
Scenario #2: Offline Business Setup
A few months ago I had dinner with a small business who was getting his website setup. His "coder" gave him...
- A professional design (magazine style WordPress theme)
- "About Us" and "Photos" pages (content supplied by the business owner)
- A Facebook Like button (installed a plugin)
- Business information and a Google Map to the location (installed a plugin)
- Coupon and QR code (installed a plugin)
That took even less time and the business owner was happy to pay over 1000 dollars for it. Just something to think about... but what about this?
Scenario #3: Membership Site Ninja
I know a couple of people who are the "modern day equivalent" of what I used to do. They are membership site installers. Their full-time living consists of:
- Installing WordPress
- Adding a good looking theme
- Setting up membership site software
- Add a simple sales letter with a payment button
- Setup "free" and "paid" levels
- Install a forum
- Install backup and monitoring plugins
Average price these people ask for membership site installations: $4000. For MAYBE an hour of work if you're slow and a riveting, action-packed re-run of "Mama's Family" is playing on your TV in the background?
My head is spinning right now with so many ways you can look at what freelance services other people are providing, and put your own "twist" on it. Here are some more examples...
- Article writer: in addition to writing the articles, you could submit the article to 20 article sites, AND login to their blog once per day to post the articles they hired you to write
- Copywriter: in addition to writing their sales letter, you could write and schedule the autoresponder emails, setup the thank you page offer and upsell, setup the affiliate program, and contact 20 joint venture partners
- Graphic Designer: in addition to creating someone's logo, you could create their 3D cover, affiliate banner graphics, sales letter "doodles" and minisite design
- Product Ghostwriter: in addition to writing someone's product, you could put it on Kindle and CreateSpace for them
- Resale Rights Seller: in addition to selling resale rights to your report or membership site, you could install the sales letter and download page on their site for them
And how do you get these jobs? Easy... contact anyone who sells a WordPress plugin, WordPress theme, article creation course, graphic creation course, copywriting course... get yourself listed in their product and download page.
Remember, that's how I got all my "$50 installation in 5 minutes" jobs came from... someone bought the link tracking plugin, and they had all the instructions to install it themselves, but that download page said: contact this guy if you want to pay 50 bucks to get it installed.
Quick question: What have you done, heard of, or plan to do to make more money with freelancing and done-for-you services?
Speed Copywriting Explained (Assemble a Web Page That Gets People to Buy From You In the Next Few Minutes)
Most people I know hate writing of any kind. And even the ones I know who LIKE writing... usually hate copywriting.
When I'm talking about copywriting today, I mean putting a web page online that gets people to buy...
It tells people about your report, book, video course or membership site in an exciting way.
"You mean I can't just say anything I want? I have to be careful about what I write? I have to write in a way that grabs my readers and doesn't let go? Sounds like a lot of work..."
Not really, when you have a formula. When you have a step by step system to follow you can do this quickly, almost without thinking, which means you knock it out in just a few minutes while you're still excited about it.
This is really important: I prefer knock out an article, sales letter, graphic, or web page in 5 minutes... make it completely shippable... and look at it later. You can take a break, clear your head, look at it with fresh eyes and put another 5 minutes into it. You can get sales and make tiny adjustments to make it sell better.
That "sounds" great, but how do you do it? Let me show you how I came up with this idea of speed copywriting...
The best skill you could ever have is writing bullet points. You turn a feature (what something is aka the boring part) into a benefit (what it does aka the outcome) and that's a bullet point.
Take your strongest bullet points and those are your headlines. Take your longest bullet points and those are your sentences. You DON'T have to make it any more complicated than that!
Here's one brand new way I thought of to think of benefits... I have many ways but this is something I thought of on a recent coaching call, on the fly. Anyone can do this.
Step #1: List what the feature is (table of contents)
Step #2: Add a second sentence at the end of that table of contents... this sentence MUST begin with the word "Imagine..."
Step #3: Delete the first sentence and the word "Imagine" so you're left with the benefit
Here we go... let's pretend we have a course teaching WordPress and it contains the following videos...
Video #1: How to install WordPress using Fantastico
Video #2: How to install your theme
Video #3: Which plugins to install
Video #4: How to add content
Now let's add a second sentence to each of those. Each sentence will begin with the word "imagine" which does several things: it continues our original thought, makes the statement a little more vague, emotional, and most importantly focuses on the outcome...
Video #1: How to install WordPress using Fantastico: Imagine in just a couple of clicks and just a few seconds you now have your entire WordPress blog installed... it's easy when you know how and now you can fire your webmaster or tech guy forever...
Video #2: How to install your theme: Imagine never needing a graphics designer or webmaster even again... just choose from thousands of professionally designed designs for your blog so you get a website that looks exactly the way you want it...
Video #3: Which plugins to install: Imagine having a blog that automatically submits your content to search engines, links to affiliate products to make you money, builds you a list of email subscribers, and more... in just a few clicks, for free...
Video #4: How to add content: Imagine being able to add a new "post" to your website from any computer or telephone, or even watch others build your web presence for you... that means written articles, audios, and videos that all bring people to your website, and keep them there, every single day...
Easy, right? I just added four sentences... and now we have our four bullet points:
- In just a couple of clicks and just a few seconds you now have your entire WordPress blog installed... it's easy when you know how and now you can fire your webmaster or tech guy forever...
- Never needing a graphics designer or webmaster even again... just choose from thousands of professionally designed designs for your blog so you get a website that looks exactly the way you want it...
- You can have a blog that automatically submits your content to search engines, links to affiliate products to make you money, builds you a list of email subscribers, and more... in just a few clicks, for free...
- Add a new "post" to your website from any computer or telephone, or even watch others build your web presence for you... that means written articles, audios, and videos that all bring people to your website, and keep them there, every single day...
It’s Simple, So It Must Not Work: How You Too Can Make Several Thousand Dollars in a Weekend
Let me tell you how my weekend went.
We made 8 sales of $97 Newbie Crusher, 3 subscriptions into $97/month Membership Cube, 1 signup to $97/month Webinar Crusher, a sale of a $49.95 product I haven't promoted in years, a couple of $7 products sold, a few $47 copies of Action PopUp, a few $47 modules of Double Agent Marketing also sold, a $197 product sold...
And a bunch of recurring subscription payments to take up the slack!
I'm saying this not to brag or make you jealous but to tell you how I did it...
Step 1: Setup a membership site to deliver the download
Step 2: Setup a sales letter to explain the offer and take payments
Step 3: Setup a page giving away a free gift upselling to the paid product
Step 4: Sent an email to my list telling them to click on a link
That's it. It really is that simple, and most of the time I even skip step three to make it even easier.
But most people won't do it, because it's too easy... what's the loophole?
"It's Simple, So It Must Not Work!"
It must not work. You must not be doing what you teach. Let me apply my own "twist" to this system. Let me try re-teaching it to others without actually doing it.
I see the same thing when it comes to "four daily tasks."
At one point I averaged how many things I really accomplished in one day. Some days it was 10 things, some days 0, some days 2, some days 5.
But on average -- I completed FOUR sixty minute tasks.
On days I completed more than four things, guess what?
- I didn't actually COMPLETE four things
- I cut up my tasks into "too small" chunks
- I was tired the next day and didn't get anything done
I've tried using fancy to-do lists, software, timers, and schedules. The only thing that will work LONG TERM for you is to do four things a day.
And if you don't know what four things you should be doing today, then:
- Setup a membership site
- Setup a SIMPLE sales letter that takes payments
- Create an optin page
- Send an email to your list
Finish four things today. Not 6, not 2, not 3, not 7, not 100... four. Then tomorrow, finish four more things, and so on. On average you'll get more things COMPLETED than those people who do 22 things one day, and 0 the next.
Overcome Procrastination Once and For All (Almost Instantly) in 4 Easy Steps
You only need to know (and implement) four things in order to overcome procrastination... so that you can take action, get results, make money, repeat it, and make it last.
First, we need to pick some simple task that you know you need to do, but aren't doing. For some of you it's quitting your day job. For others it's putting an information product out there. Maybe for you it's something as simple as writing (or dictating) one article every day.
Step 1: Side-by-Side "Ben Franklin" Comparison
The "Ben Franklin" comparison is where you have two columns. In one column you list your reasons for doing something, and in the other you list your reasons NOT to do something.
Most people do it wrong. They try to see HOW MANY things they can list in each column, and the column with the most things is the winner.
Instead, set a timer for 4 minutes and ist the "top four reasons" to do it and the "top four reasons" not to do it. That's it. If you list more than four, cross out some so you get the 4 most important, and if you have trouble thinking of four then any four will do.
I'll give you a couple examples...
- Quit Day Job: reasons to stay (reliable income, social interaction, daily routine, health insurance) vs. reasons to quit (more income, more fun, more freedom to travel, more free time)
- Launch Infoproduct: reasons not to launch (safer, no work, easier to stay anonymous, no risk of refunds) vs. reasons to launch (money, fun, growth, contribution)
- Getting Joint Ventures: reasons not to contact people (no chance of rejection, people are awkward, it's easier, ) vs. reasons to contact people (it's what successful people do, it doesn't take too much time, there are huge rewards, it's always good just to keep in touch)
Look at that, when you list things side by side it seems ridiculous to keep a job. It seems ridiculous to stay in a stay job, to not launch an information product, and makes it a necessity to get JVs.
When I was thinking about quitting my day job, both sides were pretty even for me, so I had to tip the scales in one direction or another... and once it was out of balance... I quit. But the key was chunking it down and focusing on just one specific thing.
Now you've measured the risk vs. the reward and you have a logical bird's eye view of WHY are you doing this that you can fall back on later.
Step 2: Pattern Interrupt to Minimize Bad Habits
You know what you need to be doing, now to get some kind of instant change you need to STOP one bad habit that keeps you from your goal. Back when I had my day job, and I was doing internet marketing, I was day trading stocks on my phone. I was always stressed out and sometimes it took effort to go even 10 minutes without checking my stocks.
Here's how I fixed the problem: I put a rubber band on my wrist. Every time I was about to check my stocks, I would snap that rubber band and move it to the other wrist.
I know that the reason most of you aren't productive is because you have that habit to check emails, check forums, check Facebook, check your stats or play computer games. Whenever you're about to do it, do the rubber band trick until you've accomplished your tasks for today.
Step 3: Conditioning & Anchoring
You'll start to notice that you'll start to associate pain with whatever bad habit you're getting rid of (let's say checking email) because every time you want to do it, it hurts.
Replace that old "checking your email" task with something productive. Let's say it's creating a report. Open your Word document or whatever tool you use to create a product, and the whole time you're working on it, force yourself to smile.
This does something really weird. Your brain is used to being happy, and then smiling. But it works in the other direction too. When you smile, you become happy.
When you continuously smile while typing and working on your product, then working on your product will make you happy.
If it makes you happy, then you'll want to do it more!
This is the same reason why physiologist Ivan Pavlov could ring a bell every time he fed a dog... and then eventually, just ringing the bell would get the dog to salivate. Because you're much smarter than a dog, you'll use this strategy to reward your good habits and get out of your comfort zone.
Step 4: Consistent Action (4DT)
Now that you'll have something that works, you'll want to repeat it, right?
That's where you'll use the same productivity advice I've given on every interview for year and probably will continue to give for the rest of my life...
Four Daily Tasks: At the beginning of the day, choose just four tasks you'll complete that day to move you in the right direction.
Accountability Partner: Tell someone (whether it's a business partner, spouse, parent, child, friend, neighbor, roommate) what your four tasks are, and at the end of the day, report back to them and tell them what you did or didn't finish, and why.
Time Boxing: Figure out how long a task will take you (for example, if finishing that report will take you 60 minutes), time it with a timer, and when that timer goes off, then put it online and step away from the computer. This ensures you'll stay focused and get that task completed QUICKLY.
And that's how you overcome procrastination: figure out what you want to do and Ben Franklin it, pattern interrupt whatever normally distracts you from making progress, condition yourself to enjoy it and use Four Daily Tasks to keep taking consistent action.
Website Backup: Keep Your Site Safe, Instantly Clone Your Blog, and Get Things Done Anywhere
1. Setup a backup of your ENTIRE account or your ENTIRE server in cPanel/WHM. Do this long before anything goes wrong... preferably one that automatically runs once per week and backs up via FTP to an offsite server... email your web host if you need help setting this up.
Seriously, don't even bother with any automatic WordPress backup plugins, just backup your ENTIRE account... this makes sure all your files, databases, email accounts, and everything is kept safe... not just your WordPress blog.
2. Backup your desktop files on a G-Safe redundant external drive and using offsite backup service Carbonite. Don't store everything on a memory stick or your computer's hard drive... it WILL fail eventually.
3. Install Roboform Everywhere on your computer. This software stores all your passwords in the cloud so it can sync with all your computers including your laptop and smartphone. You also don't have to spend 30 seconds logging into every website. If you only logged into 10 websites per day (think Facebook, email, your membership site, forum, someone else's membership site, YouTube, Twitter, a news site, another forum, and your hosting account) that's 5 minutes per day, which is 30 hours per year you're saving.
An added bonus is that it will auto-generate every password for every site for you... so you use a "master password" to let Roboform do its thing, but it fills out an extremely hard to guess password... and it uses a different password for every single site.
4. Bookmark each of your login pages and membership sites in your browser, organize them in folders, and use Firefox Sync to back it all up. I save my most visited sites in my "bookmarks toolbar" that appears at the top of my browser window. On this toolbar, I have:
- one bookmarks folder for News Headlines
- one bookmarks folder for Forums
- one bookmarks folder for Classes (recurring membership sites)
- one bookmarks folder for Products (standalone membership sites)
- one bookmarks folder for Dashboard sites (for travel, Google Website Optimizer, EzineArticles, and other training I'm taking
- one bookmarks folder for cPanel (site backends I login to)
5. Install the Maintenance Mode plugin on your blogs and WordPress membership sites in case you need to take them offline quickly. This is a free plugin you can install from your WordPress dashboard where you can take your entire site offline to outside visitors in one click... useful if you are tweaking your theme or if a plugin fails.
When does all of this come in handy? Last night I needed to take about 20 sites down in a hurry while a problem was fixed overnight... so you know what I did?
- I went to the "Classes" folder on my Firefox bookmarks toolbar, right clicked, and chose "Open in All Tabs" ... this opened each of my membership sites in a different tab
- I logged into each of these sites with 1-click using Roboform
- Enabled the Maintenance Mode plugin on each of these sites
And there you go, in a couple minutes, temporarily took my sites down so I could fix them.
What's your best tip to keep your business running smoothly?
Plimus Bans Internet Marketing Products (Because of $37 Clickbank-Style Offers)
Plimus (the payment processor) has now officially banned internet marketing products:
Valued Plimus Affiliate,
We wanted to advise you we are no longer supporting Internet Marketing (IM) and Business Operations (Biz-Ops) products, for which our records show you are an affiliate. This does not affect any previous sales referrals you are due payment for. Payouts of those will proceed without issue. Since the product is no longer offered on Plimus there will be no future commissions to be earned.
Thank you for marketing one of our vendor products. We hope you will go to the Plimus Marketplace and find new products for you to promote and earn commission on. If there is something we can do to assist please do not hesitate to contact us.
Sincerely,
The Plimus Team
I'm actually surprised it took this long. If you haven't heard of Plimus, here's what happened. You may have seen "blind offer" sales letters... the ones that say: you don't deserve to be on this page, make money from home, earn a residual income, run this software and make money.
"You're 6 clicks away from making a million dollars."
"Don't trust the gurus, they lie to you,
by the way I am a guru, you should trust me."
"If you want 6 times as much money just run the software 6 times."
Most of this "traffic" and "marketing" software was usually something simple like a domain name finder, email harvester, blog comment spammer, bulk page generator or something similar... not even worth $10.
The sales letter hyped up the "results" of the product showing you tons of earnings screenshots... telling you this ISN'T AdSense, this ISN'T SEO, this ISN'T product creation... buy here to find out what it is.
As you can imagine the refund rate on this was pretty high. Payment processors like Clickbank can tolerate a pretty high refund rate but this was even too much for them.
What happened: these products were banned from Clickbank they all moved to Plimus... and now they're banned from Plimus.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with a small percentage of marketers "ruining it for the rest of us" ... it was bound to happen eventually, just like:
- "Biz opps" and "multilevel marketing" are banned from PayPal
- "Internet marketing" mailing lists are banned from MailChimp
- "Non-typical results" are banned according to the FTC
- "Make money online" products were originally banned from Facebook Ads
- "Work from home" videos are recently being banned from YouTube
- "Get rich quick" products are banned from Google AdWords
- "Social media" products are banned from Clickbank
- "Public domain" (non-unique) content was recently banned from Amazon Kindle
The moral of the story is: tell me exactly what your offer is and be very careful about relying on results and income claims to make your sale.
If you're selling software, I just want to see screenshots. If you're selling information, I just want to know what the information is. And most importantly (this was huge back when AdSense courses were coming out)... if your system makes $10,000 per day... why is it only $37???
What do you think about all this?
Procrastination
I understand if you need to post your comment below under a "fake" name (but I will still be proud of you when you use your real name)...
But I have a very simple 2-part question for you today:
Part #1: What's one thing you know you should have done today, yesterday, this week, last month... that you didn't do? (you can be as detailed or vague about this as you want)
Part #2: What's your excuse, reason, or story for not doing it yet?
I'll explain why I'm asking this question and what I'm going to do with your answers in the next blog post... what's important is you quickly answer both of those questions below and I'll talk to you very soon.
Blog Scarcity
If you don't have a blog, you need to get one. If you do it right, it's just 10 minutes out of the month writing/scheduling that month's blog posts and maybe 30 minutes a month moderating and responding to comments.
But here's where my blogging style gets controversial... blog scacity. Limiting the number of comments.
Why on Earth would you limit the number of comments people can leave under your post? Here's why...
- Social Proof: Without comments, your blog looks empty. Many people are on the brink of commenting. Give them a reason to comment right now.
- Time Limit: Even if people want to comment, they take too long to think of an idea. This forces them to write what they're thinking right now.
- Interactivity: It makes your blog a fun and interactive place.
- Up-to-Date: Have you ever had someone comment on a post of yours that was a year or two old? Me too. It's annoying. I want people to comment on what's hot right now.
- Simplicity: When all the other blog posts are closed, there are fewer calls-to-action on the page.
- Perfect Fit: You can adjust the limit depending on the size of your blog. On a big blog, go for 100. On a smaller one, set it to 10 and then personally reply to everyone's comments.
- Exclusivity: It makes the early commenters special, they're the only ones with a comment on there.
- Schadenfreude: Everyone likes to watch ice skaters because they're secretly hoping they'll see someone fail... what if you don't fill up your number of comments?
- Differentiation: Most blogs haven't thought of this, or they're too chicken to try it, so you'll stand out just by doing this.
- Marketing: To fill up the number of comments, you might have to mail your list or more or stick the link in your autoresponder sequence (a good habit to have).
- Launch: To make sure everyone gets their comment in on time, you might have to announce the post a couple days ahead of time (another great habit).
- Results: It just plain works! You know you want more blog comments so implement this strategy of closing comments down after a certain number, and see what happens.
Which reason do you like the best? Do you think blog scarcity is a good or bad idea? Leave your quick opinion in the comment form below and click Submit Comment.
The Accordion Method (And Now You Never Run Out of Content Ever Again)
Here's something I've been doing for years, that literally saves me a MINIMUM of at least an hour per week, which is 52 hours per year.
Because things are more fun to discover (and remember) when we assign cutesy names to them, let's call this the Accordion Method.
When it comes to blogging, e-mailing, Tweeting, creating membership content, or anything... they simply don't manage their time well. They burn out their blog too fast.
You can be better. You can be cautiously optimistic and schedule your content ahead of time.
And here's how to do it:
- Schedule six short blog posts, one month apart. That means where most people have six weeks or six days of content, you have six months worth...
- When you have time, write six more blog posts -- remember where talking SHORT posts or re-use your old articles...
- Now, compress it back down into six months -- so it's a new post every 15 days...
- If you have less than six months in the queue, schedule more monthly posts -- but if you hit 12 months, compress all posts 30 days apart back into 15 days
Get it? It's like an accordion... out, and in, and out, and in...
At the worst case, you only have a post or two, which means you have 1-2 MONTHS of content.
- Maybe this is for a $7/month membership site... add more content, bump it to $17/month or $27/month or higher
- Maybe this is for a blog... you can leave it on autopilot for months
- Maybe this is for your email sequence... you can actually have that thing sending messages automatically
The average person might get excited about their blog at first, write a bunch of stuff, then have nothing new to say... but not you! You used the Accordion Method!
Do you pre-schedule any of your blog or autoresponder content this way? Are you going to, from now on?
Best iPhone Apps: 2011 Edition
There are three things you should know about me when you look at this post: one is that I delayed getting a cell phone until age 20 (2004). I then delayed getting a smartphone (iPhone) until 2008 because I was worried it would kill my productivity. What it ended up doing was making me even MORE productive.
Even though smartphones "can" be huge time wasters, and can very easily distract you due to various apps, pop-ups, and games... but if you are holding off on a Droid or iPhone, you would be amazed at the health and productivity benefits you get when you use the "right" apps.
Here are my top nine iPhone apps for this year...
2011 "Health" Apps
#9: AmbiScience Power Sleep & Nap: If you haven't heard of binaural beats, they're special sounds you listen to using headphones. They emit one tone from the left earphone and another from the right, and when they combine in your head, they create special pulses that (depending on what kind they are) can get you more focused, make you more alert, or even put you to sleep. I use these to fall asleep on airplane flights.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDzfSWBec4U
#8: MyNetDiary: I don't watch what I eat or how much I exercise religiously or anything, but every now and then I like to see how much water I drank today, along with how much sodium, calories, fiber, and protein I've ingested, plus how much weight I've gained or lost this week. You input everything you eat into this app and it charts all your levels for you.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFxL8oYLM6c
#7: 100 Push Ups: Three times a week this app tells you how many sets of push-ups (and how many in each set) to do in order to get you to 100 push-ups in 6 weeks. I started out only being able to do 25 push-ups at a time and by week 3 I was up to 80.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4UbI4jYCjc
#6: Nike+ GPS: Track your runs and walks, what routes you took, how many calories burned, your speed, distance, and all that good stuff. I used this while walking the Zappos.com Las Vegas Rock n Roll Marathon last year.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xyphz5H1DSE
2011 "Travel" Apps
#5: Kayak: This finds way better deals on flights and hotels than Expedia. Lance and I were recently able to score flights to Thailand for $4K each (first class) when Expedia told us they would be $10K each.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1tjU04PdUo
#4: Hulu Plus: For 7 bucks a month, you can stream many TV shows and several documentaries over 3G or Wifi. What's even cooler is this app also runs on the iPad, and the Roku (a box that connects to your TV).
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4--ctn4Mpc
2011 "Communication" Apps
#3: Skype: If someone sends you a text message on Skype, or calls you on Skype (even if it's a video call) it rings onto your phone. And yes, when you answer the Skype call on your phone, you can make it a video call with the user-facing camera, even if you're not on Wifi -- the official "FaceTime" app requires Wifi, but not Skype. You can also send Skype texts and make Skype calls right from the phone.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8QLjFdGZYw
#2: Find My iPhone: Locate, lock, and wipe your phone if you lose it anywhere.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vkTCeZN5Ts
#1: Amazon.com: Buy things even when you're not at home. I know I mentioned this one last year but it's still cool to be able to send someone a gift while you're waiting for a plane or buy something you forgot at the store. I've ordered some weird stuff lately from Amazon including supplements, Metamucil and grass-fed beef.
Those were my favorite apps for this year... what were your favorites?
Continue Reading »
Put a Button on It
When people come to your sales letter, how many of them actually buy? When they come to your optin page, how many of them signup to your list? Do you even know?
Here's something you CAN know with 100% certainty. Consider these three pages:
- A sales letter you haven't put online yet
- A sales letter with all the text on it but no order button
- A sales letter with some or no text and an order button
Yep... even if your sales letter totally sucks, if it has an order button, people can buy!
Maybe you told shared the details in person, on a webinar, on the phone, or on a forum... they still have a way to buy.
You might not have the "perfect" headline or "perfect sales letter" but there's no such thing as a "perfect" order button.
Either it's there or not. You can mess around with making it bigger, putting fancy stuff around it... but if I can't buy, I can't buy. Even if you have the BEST "everything else."
Before setting up a web page, whether it's a sales letter or email optin page, make the button first!
- It's a lot better than staring at an empty page
- You can always go back and make parts of the page better later
- You know you're not going to feel like doing it later
- You actually have to let it be "good enough" because someone might find it and buy
Do you put your optin button / order button on your web page the very first thing? If not, are you going to do it from now on?
How to Pull Confidence Out of Thin Air, Starting Today (Easy 4-Step Process with PROOF!)
I was talking to someone the other night who was afraid to run a webinar. A lot of people are. Many of you have "enough" technical skills to do it, enough knowledge about your topic to present, but "something" is holding you back.
Let's change that in this blog post, for you, right now!
Go ahead and look at this page carefully, because it's going to help you make a sale (if you are a marketer), help people (if you are a teacher), conquer public presentations (if you are a speaker), and so on.
First, I am NOT a self-help expert of any kind. But I have run 359 live webinars (697 hours) so I know a couple of things about webinar confidence and public speaking.
You and I both have our own unique set of problems. Let's solve those problems for you, not in one huge step but in a couple of SMALL pieces at a time...
News Flash:
You Have Only Have 8 Emotions (Seriously!)
As a nerdy computer programmer, I like to take apart what makes us work. And according to psychologists (I'm not one and haven't read ANY books about psychology) you have 8 basic emotions:
- joy
- trust
- anticipation
- surprise
- fear
- anger
- sadness
- disgust
That's it! Anything else you feel is either one of these in greater or lesser intensity (i.e. rage, jealousy, distraction, annoyance, interest) or is a combination of these (i.e. love or guilt).
"But dammit Jim, I'm a computer programmer, not a psychologist." That "psychology" explanation looks like a bunch of ideas thrown at me. I like to deconstruct and simplify things.
This information isn't available in any book, only right here. At least not assembled in the way I've done it here. Let's get it into a step by step formula you can apply today.
Eight things are a lot to keep track of... are four key concepts easier? Of course they are. So let's keep in mind that each of these 8 emotions has an OPPOSITE... for example, the opposite of being "happy" is "sad", right?
Four Positives and Four Negatives
That means you really only have four negative and four positive states:
- ANTICIPATION (positive) <--> SURPRISE (positive)
- JOY (positive) <--> sadness (negative)
- TRUST (positive) <--> disgust (negative)
- fear (negative) <--> anger (negative)
(I've put positive emotions in ALL CAPS and negative ones in lower caps to make this more readable.)
The "green" and "orange" colors don't mean good or bad, it's just so you can tell which are the opposites of one another. For example, "joy" and "sadness" are opposites because they have different colors. (This is important for later.)
Here's something else you should notice from these (2 + 2 + 2 + 2) eight states:
- With 2 of the "positive" emotions, the opposite is a positive
- With 2 of the "positive" emotions, the opposite is a negative
- With 2 of the "negative" emotions, the opposite is a positive
- With 2 of the "negative" emotions, the opposite is a negative
You can have all the knowledge and all the skill in the world, but if your emotions (especially fear) hold you back, if you can't "get over yourself" so to speak... then you can't do anything!
This is why so many people have trouble putting up an optin page, can't YET run a live webinar, and so on. Too many negatives holding you back and not enough positives pushing you forward.
How to Change Your Behavior
(The Way That Really Works)
And I think the reason so many people can't get past it is they either let it take them over, try to ignore it, fight it or even go against it.
You have to REDIRECT it and USE it to your advantage. When I was young, I was in (music) band, played sports and gave school presentations probably just like you.
Anytime I "fought" what I was feeling, it distracted me from hitting the baseball. BUT... if I was nervous about playing saxophone in concert, I would use that alertness to do an even better job than I would otherwise.
(Maybe that explains why I was always stuck in leftfield/shortstop/3rd base in baseball, but was 1st/2nd chair in band class?)
To improve any skill, you need to go from:
- unconscious incompetence (unaware you're doing it wrong), to...
- conscious incompetence (find out WHAT you're doing wrong), then to...
- conscious competence (doing it somewhat right even if you have to work at it), and finally...
- unconscious competence (doing it automatically as easily as breathing or driving a car).
The seven stages of grief (shock, denial, anger, bargaining, guilt, depression, acceptance) take you up to "conscious competence."
Twelve step recovery programs (problem, awareness, decision, inventory, admission, readiness, openness, details, repair, inventory, meditation, repetition) stop before you get to "unconscious competence."
Unconscious Incompetence to Unconscious Competence
There are a lot of things I don't know. But I DO know about overcoming your fear of public speaking to run webinars because I've done it. And the secret isn't figuring it all out at once, it's focusing on ONE issue you have (i.e. running one in the first place, slurring your words, stopping for questions, silence or dead air... slowly fixing things, until one day you realize you don't have to try at all...
- 0% of the way there: ground zero
(not online, not doing webinars) - 20% of the way there: unconscious incompetence
(running your first webinar, just doing "something") - 40% of the way there: conscious incompetence
(aware of little things you're doing wrong on a webinar) - 60% of the way there: conscious competence
(fixing little issues i.e. breathing on a webinar) - 80% of the way there: unconscious competence
(running a great webinar automatically)
If you've heard of the 80/20 rule, you know that 20% of the effort will bring you 80% of the results.
Life's 80/20 rule applies here in that the last 80% is the hardest... you can put in just 20% of the effort to achieve an 80% skill level (the beginnings of "unconscious competence") ... but now you're running webinars and doing them correctly: making sales, being a good presenter, recording it, all that good stuff.
Let's connect your "skill" (good or bad) your "emotion" (good or bad)... we want your negative state to be in the past, and your positive state to be in the future, right?
Anger, disgust, fear, and sadness should somehow fit into past -- the "unconscious incompetence" and "conscious incompetence" areas.
Anticipation, joy, trust, and surprise are in your future -- "conscious competence" and "unconscious competence."
When you're incompetent, you're in a negative state. When you're competent, you're positive. But how do you GET there?
Why Don't You Go "Confuse" Yourself!
The key is confusing yourself and let me explain. Think about when somebody won you over by making you laugh, overloading you with information or just confusing you with conflicting information until you gave up. You change your state through confusion.
The lack of confusion is also how you stay in a state, and why you're stuck in the state you're in now. Let's see what happens if we pair the "unconscious" states (beginning and end) with emotions that are NOT opposites, and "conscious" states (middle stages where we're improving) with emotions that ARE opposites -- to add the "confusion" factor where we make a change?
The Exact Roadmap to Do It Today
We get this roadmap of going from "guilt" to "love."
- unconscious incompetence = sadness + disgust = guilt
- conscious incompetence = anger + fear (opposites)
- conscious competence = ANTICIPATION + SURPRISE (opposites)
- unconscious competence = JOY + TRUST = love
(Remember, both "green" or both "orange" next to each other, means they're the same, "green and orange" means they're opposites.)
What you'll do is use fear and anger to rise above the guilt, take some action out of impulse, experience anticipation and surprise once you realize what you're doing, experience the joy of completion and the trust that it's possible to repeat.
Here are the steps you need to go through in order, for example, to get confident with webinars:
Stage 1: Unconscious Incompetence: (sadness + disgust) Do you feel bad because you're not making enough money? Feel guilty because you're not doing enough? It's okay to blame your "past" self for not doing enough... cry it out so you can move past it. Your present and future self WILL run one webinar this week, it's going to happen.
Stage 2: Conscious Incompetence: (anger + fear) Remember when someone said you weren't good enough to do something? That same person would probably say the same about you and webinars.Prove them wrong. Are you jealous of someone else, who has more than you do? It's not fair, you deserve it more than they do! Get mad enough to make a difference.
Maybe you could do a webinar better than "they" would... now you have something they don't.
In any case, your marketing message isn't getting out now -- you need to run at least ONE webinar. Try it. What you've been doing so far isn't working it... attack this head-on.
Stage 3: Conscious Competence: (ANTICIPATION + SURPRISE) You're allowed to be a "little" bit nervous trying something, like webinars, that you haven't done before.But one of the cool things about doing a webinar is that you don't know what's going to happen. Doing a webinar means you have to move outside your comfort zone a little bit, but what have you got to lose?
The absolute worst thing that happens is that no one shows up, or no one likes your webinar, and guess what... you're at the same place you are now! In other words, you have nothing to lose and everything to gain. Once you do this you'll know where your limits are.
Stage 4: Unconscious Competence: (JOY + TRUST) You completed the hard part... that first 2 minutes of the webinar when you were nervous, and you powered through it to the fun part.You finished your first webinar, and you're already excited about doing another one. Even if just one person said you were great, that made it all worthwhile, didn't it? You can't believe it took you this long to run a live webinar like this. You want to do it again and again. Your next webinar will be even better.
If you're not ready to run webinars, replace "run a webinar" with "make an optin page" ... "setup a payment button" ... or even "exercising" or "quitting your job" or "dating" ...
I'm not saying I know everything about everything, but you can apply what I know about webinar confidence to your own life, so that you can tackle that problem of having a SKILL but not yet having the CONFIDENCE to put yourself out there.
What do you think?
Curiosity Actually Increases Your Conversions! Here’s How…
Want to know the easiest way to get more of your e-mails read, and to get more blog comments?
Is it to say less in your e-mails? And less in your blog posts?
I wanted to finally know the truth, I did what any programmer would do... I took the word count of 100-plus of my blog posts and the comment count of 100-plus of my blog posts.
(My blog posts are an average of 539 words and I get an average of 28 comments per post... cool, right?)
I dumped the whole thing into an Excel spreadsheet and calculated the correlation between the length of a blog post and the number of comments it gets.
I was dead-set on telling you that shorter blog posts get you more comments, but guess what happened?
I Was Wrong... and The Answer Really Surprised Me!
Excel is supposed to give me a number between -1 and +1. -1 means a negative correlation. That would mean shorter blog posts get more comments. +1 would be a negative correlation, meaning LONGER blog posts get you more comments.
But the correlation was: -0.050037583
Almost No Relationship Between
Length of a Blog Post and Number of Comments!
There is no difference between a short blog post (my shortest is 40 to 100 words) and a long blog post (my longest is 1000 to 1300 words)...they get the same number of comments!
If you're a boring blogger, it doesn't matter if your post is short or long. You'll still get the same number of comments. And if you're exciting, whether you're short or long, you'll get the same number of comments.
It's about the content, not the length.
That Means Size Doesn't Matter... Or Does It?
So does that mean you shouldn't care whether your posts or short or long? It means your posts should always be short. Here's why...
Scenario #1 - One Long Post: Let's say it takes you an hour to write a 1000 word blog post. You could post it once and get 10 comments and be done.
Scenario #2 - Three Short Posts: Or you could split it into three blog posts, post there 333 word blog posts and get 10 comments once, 10 comments the next time, and 10 comments on the third part for a total of 30 comments.
So if you're trying to maximize the number of comments on your blog, why WOULDN'T you write short blog posts? Since it makes no difference?
And on top of all that, it's easier to "tease"... arouse curiosity...by saying less. When you try to get curiosity by saying MORE... it becomes more and more like an episode of "Lost" which to me is just too much work.
Keep It Simple....
Say less in your blog posts (keep it at 500 words or less) and say less in your e-mails leading up to your blog posts to get them to click.
I'll leave you with the template for Lance's BEST converting e-mail message ever. It's fill-in-the-blank and it's such a short and vague message it'll make your head spin...
This is what me and Lance joke about as the "What's That About?" e-mail template. Just replace anything inside (parentheses) with your own words related to your product and your niche.
Why (insert technique here) is the worst way to (get the result you want).
What (number) other techniques work much better?
What are other keys to (desired result)?
(Guess)?
What's that all about?
Discover the secrets...
(url)
Go there now...
That's right. A simple 39-word e-mail converted better than a year's worth of longer e-mails. Crazy, isn't it?
As usual, I need 50 comments to continue blogging... and after I get 100 comments... I will CLOSE all future comments to this thread. Looking forward to your comments below!
Question:
What's Your Weirdest Curiosity Technique That's
Gotten You Clicks, Optins and Sales?
Or what technique from an e-mail guru has sucked you into either clicking on an e-mail link, opting in or buying? What single line has aroused your curiosity more than anything else?
How to Attract Super Affiliates
Affiliate sales are your ticket to an income that runs on autopilot. It might be fun to launch a few products on your own, write a bunch of articles and optimize pay-per-click campaigns, but at some point that is going to become boring, almost like a chore. Wouldn't it be great to hand the reigns over to someone else, to have someone else focus on the marketing while you sit back, collect the money, and only deal with customer support? There are three simple tactics you can use to attract super affiliates to your offer.
The first thing you can do is write a solo ad. When a well-known internet marketer launches a new product, do you notice that many of the e-mails you receive for it, from different marketers, all say the exact same thing ? That is because the product vendor gave out solo ads to his affiliates. A solo ad is a pre-written cut and paste e-mail advertisement for your product. It contains a catchy subject line and some text to get people to click on the affiliate link in the e-mail.
That is the only job of the solo ad... to get people to click. If that means you have to educate people a tiny bit on the product to get them interested, or you have to share a few bullet points, do it, but get people to click. Many marketers give affiliates multiple solo ads, but I believe in keeping things simple and only giving them a single solo ad. I make sure to remind my would-be affiliates that they can use the ad as a blog post, e-mail message, rewrite and submit it as an article or press release, record it into a video, do anything they can to stay ahead of the competition.
Affiliates also care about metrics. Tell prospective affiliates what the conversion rate is for your site. How much commission do they make? Is there an upsell or recurring commissions? Are there affiliate incentives? Do affiliates get free access to the product or a higher commission after a certain number of sales? What is the visitor value? All of these pieces of info are very important to your affiliates so they know what kind of traffic to throw at it, what to bid for keywords, and so on.
Finally, don't forget to train your affiliates, especially in niches outside of internet marketing. Tell them about list building, landing pages, forum marketing, blogging, and so on, so they have all the tools they need to get your product out there, and make you both some money.
Those tips are what you need to get started in gathering super affiliates: solo ads, giving the proper metrics, and training affiliates.
